


Take All My Loves, My Love

by AndreaLyn



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Love Curse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 09:23:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2616677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With his time running out, Aramis must either find his true love or succumb to the old family curse that has doomed him to ill luck in love and an early end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take All My Loves, My Love

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Shakespeare's sonnet 40.

Aramis is far from surprised when Athos accosted him outside of the palace, a livid look upon his face that could light a hundred fires with incandescent rage. Aramis was quick to check that Porthos and d’Artagnan were far from view, holding up a hand as if to head off whatever protests might come, but Athos was as quick with words as he was with a sword.

“What is the unholy matter with you?”

Aramis opened his mouth to protest. “I didn’t know…”

“That sleeping with the Queen of France might lead to _consequences_?” Athos hissed, his eyes wild. “First Adele, now this, and I cannot count the number of married women, dangerous men, and others you have slept with as you try to work your way through France and towards the inevitable noose.” Athos shook his head in disbelief. “Shall I fetch the Cardinal so you can perform oral acts on him?”

Aramis shifted his hat sheepishly, stroking his thumb over the feather. “To be fair, he likely already knows some of them after what I taught Adele.”

From the stony look on Athos’ face, humour had _not_ been the right choice.

“I don’t understand,” Athos said calmly. “Make me.”

Aramis sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “The trouble is, you aren’t going to believe me.”

“Aramis, I assure you that providing me with an actual reason as to why you make the poor choices you do will never pass by with disbelief.” 

Aramis brushed two fingers over his forehead steadily, trying to debate whether he was truly going to tell Athos the truth about why he was so free with his affections, poor with his choices, and utterly horrible when it came to controlling his heart. “You cannot tell the others,” he warned. “Especially not Porthos.”

That seemed to surprise Athos and it wasn’t difficult to understand why. Now, with the affair with the Queen in addition to this secret he was about to reveal, there would be multiple things that Aramis was keeping from the man and there was a time when he’d sworn to be honest with his brothers. The trouble was that as Aramis grew closer and closer to his thirtieth birthday, things had grown more dire and he worried at what would happen if the clock struck midnight and Aramis had not claimed that true love’s kiss (and true love’s promise for a life together, unfortunately, for this curse upon his head was not so romantic as to end with a single kiss).

“My family is cursed.”

By the look on Athos’ face, he did not believe Aramis, which was hardly a surprise. The only other person Aramis had ever told this to outside of his family was Marsac, who had been so furiously determined to prove that he was the one to break Aramis’ spell. In the end, he had only been another emissary of the curse.

“My great-grandfather seduced a woman for her beauty,” Aramis explained, which could be the starting chapter in his own life. “But he lied to her to do it, trading on his charms, good looks, and words in order to slip into her life. When he was bored with her, he dismissed her in a way that ruined her. What my great-grandfather didn’t realize was that she was a practitioner of spells and dark arts. She cursed his familial line to ill luck in love, poor choice, and the heart leading the d’Herblays down a road of consequence, bad luck, and worse relationships.”

He hadn’t believed it himself, but then Isabelle had happened and then a string of bad affairs including Marsac and many others. Unlucky in love, but forever doomed to repeat his mistakes, Aramis had quickly come to believe in the family curse.

“Are you trying to tell me that your inability to keep it in your pants is because of a witch’s curse? You must think me an idiot,” he said calmly.

“I told you that you wouldn’t believe me,” Aramis warned. “There is an escape. My father, for one, was able to find his true love by thirty.”

“Thirty? What happens at thirty?”

“Ah, yes, that lovely failsafe,” Aramis noted dryly. “Apparently, the suffering in love wasn’t enough. The curse ends a life if the true love is not found by thirty. Enough time to create more cursed children,” he said, rather dismal as he knew that if the Queen’s child was truly his own, he too would be cursed with this doomed life. 

She hadn’t broken the spell. He had been so hopeful, what with his heart alight and her beauty capturing his gaze.

“The trouble is that the curse makes the men of my line _think_ that we are truly and absolutely in love with anyone we set even the slightest affection towards. Then, as soon as we consummate the relationship with anyone apart from the true love, it goes badly. It goes very, very badly.”

It was why Aramis could never let Porthos know. It was why Aramis flirted with the man, but always kept distance when things looked like they could tumble from their easy friendship into something more. He’d watched things go terribly with Marsac and Adele and Isabelle and so many others. He couldn’t bear to think of Porthos suffering the same fate because of Aramis’ wayward heart. It made him sick to love someone so dear to him, but know that he could potentially harm the man by letting him in too close. 

“ _If_ this were true,” Athos said calmly, “it would explain a great deal about your ill luck in love. It does not tell me why you can’t tell Porthos, whom I thought was your best friend in all matters.”

“Athos, I just told you that the people I fall in love with and get close to, the ones I allow myself to _be_ with end up in an unhappy predicament. Dead, exiled, banished, heartbroken,” he listed, thinking of poor Marsac, unlucky Adele, beautiful Isabelle, and all the others he had loved with abandon. “You would let him fall down the same path?”

“You love him.”

“I think everyone does to a degree,” Aramis confessed with a wry smile. “That heart of his is hard not to love.”

“Aramis,” Athos said, with a calculating look on his face that told Aramis that he’d solved the other unsavory aspect of all this. “You turn thirty in a matter of weeks,” he reminded him. “And _if_ this were true…”

“It is!”

“Then the Queen is either your salvation or your damnation. Unless you decide to make an attempt with Porthos,” Athos said, with a look on his face that suggested he didn’t find the idea a good one either. It wasn’t difficult to imagine things going poorly if Aramis gave in to that horrible need for Porthos, fearing that there would be another catastrophe within the Musketeers or someone would find them out.

Worse, Aramis could see all too easily that someone might discover Porthos and loathe him for no good reason, choosing to exact violence on him and harming him, potentially to the point of him losing his life. 

It was a mess. And it was a mess that Aramis didn’t think he could solve, but he could do what Athos did best in situations like this. 

“I’m going to the tavern. Perhaps my eye will be struck with a new beauty by the end of the night and fate will chance a smile upon me,” Aramis said brightly, as though this affected cheer could somehow stop the inevitable. Athos was right. He only had weeks left before something terrible happened to him, but he was heartsick to know that he would much rather this terrible fate strike him and only him down, for fear of what it might do to Porthos. 

Aramis loved him with all his heart and would do anything to avoid him in pain, even if it meant at the sacrifice of his own life.

“I will join you,” Athos offered. “Luckily, I was cursed in love long before I met you. I doubt even your family’s old curse could make my love life worse.”

Aramis chuckled wearily, amused by Athos’ self-deprecation (even though it was sadly spot on and knowing what he did about the man’s life, Aramis felt like perhaps one of the Comtes in Athos’ history had encouraged his own curse). “Good,” Aramis said, swallowing back the grief that had risen up after the day’s events. “You’re buying.”

“I always am,” Athos sighed.

The coin was reliable for a great deal of time, but even that came to an end. With Aramis’ lips stained red and the pooling warmth of alcohol in his stomach, Aramis began to feel steady again. He didn’t rely on the drink like Athos did, but there were times when he felt he needed it to ground him, as though transubstantiation could happen in any old tavern in Paris and the Holy Spirit could descend into Aramis’ glass and calm him.

Athos hadn’t been able to do that. After two bottles of wine and three cups, Athos left with a quiet mutter about needing time to think. Given the very long day’s events and the revelation as to who that woman was, Aramis couldn’t blame him. 

They had picked their way to the reliable tavern close to the garrison in order to stumble home safely, so Aramis had few qualms about letting Athos go. Now, though, he had finished the third bottle of wine by himself and had grown unearthly still and quiet, trapped in his own mind with all the persistent thoughts of how his future consisted of a matter of weeks. Planning one’s own demise was a gruesome thing, but Aramis did it out of necessity, thinking of the provisions he could make for the Queen and her child without the King or Cardinal finding out (and wondering if he ought to, given that the curse could harm her and the infant as well; staying away might be the best way to protect them). He was so occupied in wondering whom he should bequeath his earthly possessions that he did not notice the man behind him until a firm hand clapped down on his shoulder.

“Athos mentioned you were here,” Porthos’ familiar voice rumbled, sitting down in the chair next to him. “He said there’s something you’re meant to tell me?”

Aramis cursed Athos under his breath, hoping with a heated determination that it was the drink that had loosened his tongue and not some righteous sense of knowing better than Aramis did. As it was, he vowed to accidentally shoot his next round of targets slightly to the left and right by Athos in some perverse sense of revenge.

Hiding his tremulous smile behind his cup, Aramis shook his head and affected innocence. “I’ve no idea what you mean. He must be drunker than usual, spouting off nonsense like that.”

Porthos eyed Aramis warily in that measured way that said he was debating whether or not a person was lying to him. Aramis held that steady gaze and prayed that he was not as transparent as he often thought. He felt sickly amused by the notion that here, so close to the end, his temptations were being presented to him. He was hardly facing a desert, but the relief of finding solace in Porthos was so close as it always was and he shuttered off those emotions before Porthos could pick them off his face.

“You’re sure? You’ve both been acting strange since the abbey.”

Well, then. Perhaps Athos meant for Porthos to hear half the truth, if not the whole of it. Perhaps Athos was even offering him a kindness. If Porthos heard the truth and found out that he’d both been lied to for three months and that Aramis had done exactly what Porthos had advised him against, then the man wouldn’t linger so close to him.

Cutting and cruel and efficient with strategy as he was with a sword, Aramis loved Athos for his harshness in that moment.

This was going to be horrible and it was going to ache and possibly break them, but it would be for Porthos’ own good. He would make sure that Porthos was looked after – between Athos, Treville, and even Constance. He would insist that the man found a happy life, even if it meant straying from soldiering. Good God, Aramis had been so jealous of Alice when she had nearly stolen away Porthos’ heart because she had made it seem so very easy and had done it in a matter of days.

Aramis had been hiding his affections for years and couldn’t reveal what he wanted for fear of pain and death.

“Something happened at the abbey, something we’ve been lying to you about,” Aramis began, having decided that Porthos’ life was worth more to him than their friendship in these last few weeks, even if it broke Aramis’ heart to do. He would perform the difficult surgery and lop off the limb in order to save the life. It was already working, judging by the dark look on Porthos’ face, who seemed none too happy to hear that he’d been lied to.

Of course he would feel that way. Porthos was bred with honesty in his blood and sometimes couldn’t understand why everyone else was built differently.

“Lying to me,” he said woodenly, sinking into the chair opposite Aramis and crossing his arms. “What about?”

“I slept with the Queen.”

There. Five words that would destroy them and it was a quick slice of the sword. Porthos’ face fell instantly and Aramis stubbornly held tight to his determination not to allow himself to falter. He dealt with the betrayed look on Porthos’ face, aided along by the alcohol. What was worse was Porthos’ knowing silence, followed by the swift epiphany that struck him when he must have realized what Athos already knew.

“That was three months ago,” he growled. “The child…?”

“Likely mine,” Aramis agreed, thinking to himself that he had twenty-five days left until his birthday and it would burn him to spend them without his best friend by his side, but at least Porthos would be alive. “No one but Athos knows.”

There was no indignant reply, no shout, only the dangerous look on Porthos’ face that he got when he was debating his next move. 

“Why?”

Aramis nearly crumpled at the single query. It was one simple word, but Porthos looked so desperate to know. There was a searching look on his face and he wanted an explanation that would solve everything for him. Aramis could give it to him, but then he would risk being in the same position as he’d been with Marsac all over again and he couldn’t do that, not when his energy was already beginning to flag.

“Because she’s a beautiful woman,” Aramis said, swallowing back his grief.

“You don’t give a damn, do you?” There was little anger in Porthos’ voice, only dismay and disappointment. “This could get you _killed_.”

_Not likely_ , thinks Aramis, given that if the Cardinal manages to beat the curse, then the man is far more expedient than Aramis has ever given him credit for. He steadied himself for the continued brunt of Porthos’ emotional force, as carefully and expertly wielded as his fists at times. Aramis had to do whatever he could to allow Porthos to cut him out completely and that meant affecting a level of uncaring nonchalance as though he could dismiss all of this with a wave of his hand.

“What can I say? She’s a beautiful woman and I’m a charming man. It was bound to happen,” he said, voice dripping with charm and condescension. He watched as his shots landed their mark, Porthos flinching and recoiling back in his chair.

“Aramis…”

“And the Cardinal is too thick by far to find out,” he added, for careful measure to ensure he didn’t let on that there was a chance the Cardinal already knew. This was not Porthos’ battle and he had to be kept out of it. “I don’t know why you care so much.”

There, there it was. There was the final blow.

Porthos loved Aramis as much as Aramis loved him in turn. He knew this, he knew he only needed to say the word and he could have the man. Calling his loyalty and his love into question was tantamount to insulting Porthos by implying he was without honour and it was just the thing to break them apart. 

“You’re an idiot,” was all Porthos had to say, shoving his chair back to the ground with a clatter in his haste to leave.

Aramis stared into his empty cup and let out a long, slow, careful sigh. His heart felt tight, but Aramis couldn’t be sure whether that was grief or the inevitable end of the curse beginning its’ slow countdown. “You have no idea the depths of my idiocy, _chou_ ,” he muttered and finished the last drops before he set his hat back upon his head to make his way back to his empty room, where he would begin the count to the end.

* * *

The room smelled of a supernatural illness, to Aramis’ beliefs. Athos had thrust open the windows when he’d arrived, but it couldn’t shake the scent from the room; something like incense and something deeper, older. There were only six days left before his birthday and his body had grown progressively weaker to the point that Athos had begun to make excuses to Treville. 

Porthos had not visited since their fight at the tavern.

“He asks about you,” Athos said, shaking out one of Aramis’ blankets. D’Artagnan visited, as did Treville, but they brought optimism and well-wishes. Athos brought with him reality and a matter-of-fact way of dealing with the inevitable. He had helped Aramis to plan a succession of his possessions and a will with messages. Once he was gone, he could tell Porthos the truth about everything. He owed him that much. 

Aramis groaned as Athos jammed a pillow underneath his head with very little tenderness. “You’re an awful nurse.”

“I’m all you’ve got,” Athos replied. “And I’m afraid I am repenting.”

There was something dangerous in those words. Aramis eyed Athos warily, but the man was doing his best to avoid Aramis’ gaze. Aramis struggled to sit up, rifling through all the things that Athos would feel that he had to apologize for, but the one he landed on was a dangerous thought and Athos could never show that level of cruelty to his friends, could he? _Or perhaps he could_ , spoke the hopeful part of Aramis’ mind, _if he thought he could save his friend_.

“Either you are very stupid or very optimistic,” Aramis said with a chilled voice, having guessed at what Athos was confessing to. “What if he isn’t…?”

“Then you have told me of your curse and I will protect him, but losing both of you in one fell swoop when we have not exhausted all of our options is stupidity,” Athos informed Aramis with a crisp and firm tone that implied they were done having a discussion about this because he had decided for all of them. “I have never known you to be frightened, Aramis.”

“For his sake, I will be a coward,” Aramis vowed. “Does he know…?”

“Of your curse? Not entirely. I told him that you were dying.”

“Athos!”

Athos calmly pulled on his leather gloves, tilting his head to one side as if to ask Aramis whether there was something else that they might have told Porthos to get him here after the seeds of discord that Aramis had sown in the tavern that night. “I will leave you to your private affairs with him. Perhaps this is merely his opportunity to say goodbye, but I firmly suggest that you do something with the knowledge that no curse on the d’Herblay line can compete with my sheer determination to keep my friends alive,” he informed him. “Don’t let him concuss you,” was his mild warning before he left and before Aramis could even find the energy to protest, Porthos stood where Athos had just been.

It meant that Porthos had been lingering outside for God knew how long and this was unavoidable. Porthos hovered around the walls of the room, not daring to look at Aramis or come close to him. The smell of sick lingered in the air, despite the open windows, and Aramis drew his blankets close to him as he grew colder. He had read old journals from relatives who hadn’t found their loves by thirty and it spoke of how the heart grew slower and slower in its beating until it stopped.

Aramis could begin to feel the thrumming begin to slow.

“You’re dying,” Porthos said, as though he was too stubborn to actually believe it and he expected Aramis to contradict him. “How?” His eyes scanned Aramis’ body from where he stood by the window, as if looking for wounds. “You haven’t been injured lately. Disease?”

“Something like,” Aramis replied, resting his hand above his heart. “What did Athos tell you?”

“He said that you were dying and there was one more secret you had yet to tell me.”

“He will have me be honest if it is my dying act,” Aramis muttered, staring at Porthos and patting a space on the bed, which he made by shifting over to the side. His limbs ached, as if there was not enough spirit to keep them moving. “Come, sit here. It is a fantastical story and of all people, you might believe it. You always did wish to believe the wondrous and lovely things in the world.”

Porthos approached cautiously and Aramis could not help the chuckle he drew from his wariness.

“I am not contagious, I promise you,” he vowed. “Sit with me and you will have the truth by the time you leave.” His energy waned, but he summoned it up to tell Porthos the truth. The man deserved that much, seeing as Aramis hadn’t been able to provide him with the affection that he deserved and had been denied for so very long. “I’m cursed.”

Porthos made a face as he sank down onto the covers, reaching out to slide his adept and elegant fingers over Aramis’ palm, turning it over as if he meant to offer some solace by giving him support. “You’re what now?”

“Cursed,” Aramis confirmed with a nod of his head. “My great-grandfather brought this curse upon us when he allowed his heart and…other places…to stray where they ought not to have. You wonder, my friend, why I am so terribly unlucky in love? It is partially the fault of my family’s tendency to love with all our hearts with no abandon and more the fault of the curse that robs us of our chance at happiness. Perhaps if I had been born to a different family, I might still be with Isabelle and we might have a gaggle of children by now.” Porthos’ grip on his hand turned tighter and Aramis grimaced for the sudden pressure. “Marsac, dead after abandoning me. Adele, gone and never to see me again. I fear banished,” he said. “And the Queen, doomed to some tragedy I do not wish to think about.”

“I don’t understand,” Porthos said, voice heavy. “Why are you dying?”

“Because thirty is as far as I get.”

“Your father’s older than that,” Porthos heatedly argued, that grip on Aramis’ hand tighter than before, but it was a welcome touch. “You’ve told me that your parents have been together since they were young, that they’re growing old together now. He’s older than thirty, because he’s still alive. Are you lying to me again?” he demanded, eyes flashing with anger.

“No, I’m not,” Aramis said in a rush. “There is one way to break the curse, one simple way to not die.”

Porthos looked at him expectantly.

“Men in my family line are doomed to curse their loved ones _unless_ they somehow manage to find their true love. In which case, the curse dispels, they are permitted to live past thirty, and they are happy. Truly happy. I believe the woman who cursed my great-grandfather was after that all along. She wanted him to suffer, yes, but she also wanted him to find the right place to rest his heart.”

“You turn thirty in a matter of days, Aramis,” Porthos said, sliding his thumb in slow strokes up and down Aramis’ palm. There was fear on Porthos’ face, a deep fear that Aramis knew all too well because he had been feeling it for months and months now. “You’re telling me, for the first time, that I’m going to lose you?”

“Athos has vowed to protect you,” Aramis assured him. “When I am gone and we are no longer the Three Inseparables, but merely the two.”

Aramis watched Porthos swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. It was heartbreaking to watch Porthos accept this news and Aramis hoped that he wasn’t calling to mind old memories of watching his mother die in the Court, but he had never wanted to tell Porthos this. He cursed Athos under his breath for forcing his hand and demanding that the truth be told, not understanding why he would strain his last few days. Then again, Porthos was here with him and talking to him and wasn’t that much more than Aramis had hoped for?

Porthos face had crumpled and he leaned down so that his forehead was pressed to Aramis’. This was a touch so dear and simple that Aramis soaked it up, reaching up his trembling hand to cup Porthos’ cheeks as he offered him a sad smile. “My biggest regret is that I could never offer you what I wanted,” Aramis admitted. “Were those that I love not cursed to bad endings upon consummation, I would have given you as much as I could, as much as I would have been permitted.”

He had thought about it, sometimes. There were old estates littering the countryside that he might have bought up with money earned from his deeds and patronesses. He and Porthos would never even need to tell people the whole truth, given that they were already known to travel together. They could escape for weeks of leave together, a secret affair hidden under Paris’ nose while they stole moments in the city. It would have been daring to do under the Cardinal’s nose, but Aramis enjoyed daring.

“You love me,” Porthos murmured and it sounded so right coming from him, as though Aramis had never said anything half so lovely in all his life. “And I feel the same for you, which I’m sure you know,” he said, bearing down on Aramis more heatedly as he moved his hands to press his shoulders into the bed. “I won’t let you die.”

“You don’t have a choice, Porthos,” Aramis said fondly. “You are strong and capable and so very clever, but even you cannot undo dark magic.”

“If I can take care of myself, then why have you never tried? What if I’m your happiness?”

Aramis’ heart soared to imagine it for even a second. _Porthos_ holding Aramis’ future and his happiness in those large, capable hands. The trouble was that it was a fairytale too good to be true and while Aramis was apparently living in a world filled with evil spells, he certainly didn’t fancy himself the prince. 

“You wish to be my true love?”

“After everything I’ve put up with over the last near-decade I’ve known you?” Porthos chuckled and leaned in slowly, his lips but a breadth’s hair away from Aramis’. “Won’t you at least let me try?”

To Aramis’ belief, there was no such thing as a true love’s kiss. He had experienced a great number of wonderful kisses over his lifetime, but none so magical that they knocked him off kilter. The Queen had kissed so sweetly and he still holds Adele’s intoxicating kisses in his memory, recalls Isabelle’s tentative and searching kisses before they had become knowing and loving, and he could never forget Marsac’s demanding lips. Of the countless lovers he had taken, they all kissed with such abandon and passion and he’d loved them all.

That was the curse, after all. He truly and honestly loved them all.

Aramis breathed in, and on the inhalation, Porthos made the decision for them as he leaned in and kissed Aramis in such a fashion that Aramis’ eyes fell shut and he reached out to slide his trembling fingertips through Porthos’ curls, sliding down to the nape of his neck to brush slow circles against the warm skin there, cataloguing everything about _this_ kiss as though he never wanted to remember anything else.

Porthos kisses Aramis as though they were having a conversation or a fight or simply like one of their long looks. There was familiarity and tenderness and warmth and so much fondness and affection in the way Porthos worked the kiss deeper, parting Aramis’ lips with a nudge of his own, pressing his body flush against Aramis’ body. His heart quickened, for a brief and maddening moment, and Aramis’ breath poured out hot through shaky exhalations from his nostrils, pressed into the bed by Porthos’ overwhelming and distracting weight, and when he eased back up, Aramis felt breathless and hopeful and so very much alive.

He didn’t know what to expect. Was this enough? Was it what he needed or was he dooming Porthos to only disaster and dismay.

Porthos slid his hand over Aramis’ heart, eyes flashing with worry. “Aramis, are you all right? Your heart’s beating like I’ve never felt before.” 

The shaking in his hands had stopped too, the ever-pressing weakness in his limbs seemed to be bleeding away. He stared at Porthos with mild shock and rather than use any words to exclaim gratitude or regret, he did the only thing he thought necessary – he kissed Porthos a second time to begin finding out what that one would look like in his memory.

And if he was very, very lucky, then he would have thousands of these kisses stored up to trace back and enjoy for many years to come.


End file.
